This is one of Thomas Nast’s most powerful Civil War engravings created when he was just 22 years old. In this double-page centerfold Nast illustrates what he believed to be the past and the future of enslaved people in the United States.  Click on each blue star to learn more about the image.

The young girl wearing a dress and holding a hat seated next to her father in this central image is the same child used as a model in "Girl with Doll" seen in the next activity. 

The central vignette depicts a formerly enslaved family now living happily together. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs on the wall near the fireplace around which the family is gathered. The young girl wearing a dress and holding a hat seated next to her father in this central image is the same child used as a model in "Girl with Doll" seen in the next activity. 

On the right side, Nast illustrated what he thought the lives of formerly enslaved people could be. He depicts them being paid for their work and attending public schools. 

The young boy holding a book, standing behind his father is the same child in “The Colored Volunteer” seen in the next activity.

On the left side of the image Nast depicts some of the horrors of slavery: the public sale of enslaved people and the physical abuses the enslaved people had to endure.

On January, 1 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that began with the following: “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…”

This image by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper's Weekly on January 24, 1863, a couple weeks later.

Do you think that Thomas Nast supported President Lincoln's Proclamation? 

Standards for Thomas Nast Illustrates Values: Emancipation